WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: BrowseAloud

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Mar 23, 2011 12:57PM

Hi

I fail to see the point of such a feature, honestly, and I think they
should be putting more effort into good page design, rather than
custom start speech on their web page )by "they", I mean designers in
general, I know nothing good or bad about the accessibility of this
particular webpage).
For one thing, users who need Browse Aloud (at least totally blind
users) cannot know it is there when they log onto a page, so it would
have to autostart when they log on, but that would annoy general
users.
At least I hope they put an AccessKey to start it (at least for
returning users they would know to press that key combination). I
wonder if Browse Aloud offers navigation by html elements like
headings, lists, check boxes, if it enables user to interact with a
form using edit fiels and buttons, works with Javascript and does all
those things people have come to expect from screen readers.

I think in the modern days of free and open source screen readers,
like NVDA, this effort is misguided.
Of course there may be user scenarios I am not aware of that are
beneficial, I take the blind perspective first, being a blind user,
and I happy bow to people with superior knowledge on ths subject, and
would be happy to learn that this has a purpose.
Cheers
-Birkir


On 3/23/11, LSnider < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Someone just sent this to me...The Library of Congress finally updated their
> web site. They now have a speech enabled feature using BrowseAloud. The info
> is at the bottom of this page:
> http://www.loc.gov/access/web.html
>
> It was interesting to me that they put this speech enabled link at the
> bottom of their main page, but at least it is there (I haven't studied their
> code yet to see where it comes up with a screen reader).
>
> What do you think of this strategy? Have you used this?
>
> Thanks
>
> Lisa
>